| Author | Message | ||
     Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Give him even one minute of film time, and he still creates nightmares.... http://www.deadline.com/2011/09/david-lynch-trailer-promotes-vienna-fest/ | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
I love him. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.38.10 |
God, that was simultaneously terrifying and hilarious. It felt like a trailer for a much bigger film. The sound was incredible. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.152.191.118 |
It was ok - anyone ever subscribe to his site? It's full of these things (pity the other users are up their own asses though - they make Lynch look a bit puzzled by them, like to talk to he'd rather be like someone normal like Ronnie Barker. You could almost feel him willing everyone to talk about something like X Factor.). | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
I'll probably be banished for saying this but I've never really "got" any of his films. I liked Blue Velvet but Twin Peaks and Eraserhead (in particular) left me cold. I just don't understand the adulation that surrounds eraserhead. I just found it confusing and quite tedious after a while. I saw the big reveal scene in Twin Peaks where leland killed someone and I thought it was laughably badly done. It might have made more impact if I'd seen more than an hour of the previous episodes combined I suppose but it just seemed to be a badly written/directed/shot scene. Now what's a safe distance to retreat to? | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
I've been a huge fan of David Lynch ever since being freaked out by 'Eraserhead' late one Friday night back in my schooldays! The effect of that movie broadened my awareness of what could be achieved in horror cinema at a single stroke. I still remember extolling the weird virtues of this nightmare of a B&W movie, I wasn't sure if I had dreamed, to my mates for weeks afterward. Thankfully a few others had seen it as well so I knew I hadn't hallucinated the thing - remember, Sean. That night I received an incendiary shock to the psyche that marked my coming of age in terms of appreciating "difficult" Art. Only the terrifying shorts of Jan Svankmajer, caught on Channel 4 a few years later, had a similar influence on my taste for the nightmarish and the bizarre. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.152.199.248 |
Looking at that short you can see where Vic & Bob got their ideas. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
Proto - I've always thought that about Reeves and Mortimer, too. They must've watched Eraserhead hundreds of times... | ||
| Steve Bacon (Stevebacon) Username: Stevebacon Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 90.204.111.205 |
There's that Reeves & Mortimer sketch where a terrifying version of Loyd Grossman floats around on Masterchef...very Lynchian. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
Yep. That sketch isn't even funny - just scary. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.150.133.94 |
That trailer for me just looks like something a mega pretentious art student would do and get slated for it but coz it's lynch apparently it's genius | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.22.166 |
Even when seen as an adult, the Masterchef sketch feels like the kind of thing that permanently scars a piece of your mind. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
I just youtube-searched that Reeves & Mortimer Masterchef video, found this which I assume is it http://youtu.be/towd9vZWDJg and can only say... WTF WAS THAT!?! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
David Lynch is a visionary director but he's not incapable of making drastic mistakes in his career. Apart from a few standout scenes 'Dune' was a terrible adaptation of Frank Herbert's masterpiece and, I have to say, I was never overly fond of his 'Twin Peaks' project - despite all the great work that is in there. I think he wasted far too much time on that TV series rather than turning out a more cohesive one-off film than 'Fire Walk With Me' turned out to be. I still think he should have a crack at re-editing the whole thing into one self-contained work. Since then, however, he hasn't put a foot wrong. His films have been getting more assured with each release and his last magnum opus, 'Inland Empire', is probably the finest horror film of the new millennium to date and his most nightmarish work since 'Eraserhead'. Can't wait to see what he does next. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
I just think he's random meandering tedium as a filmmaker personally. I find myself wondering where the story's going to appear in the stuff that I have seen. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.43.67 |
I don't think he spent that much time with the Twin Peaks series, which was why is meandered away from quality in the second half of the second series. Fire Walk with Me is my favourite film. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.43.67 |
I'm not sure about Inland Empire. I think it was so vast it blew itself apart like a too-massive star igniting. If TWIN PEAKS is his Ulysses, INLAND EMPIRE is his Finnegan's Wake, but has anyone genuinely enjoyed that book? | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
"Fire Walk with Me is my favourite film" Fucking terrifying, that film. Terrifying. I get what you mean about Inland Empire, Proto - and love the way you phrased it - but personally I think it's a work of terrible, uneffable genius. An emotional hailstorm of a film. I actually felt physical dicomfort as I watched it. | ||
| John Forth (John) Username: John Registered: 05-2008 Posted From: 82.24.1.217 |
INLAND EMPIRE is a difficult piece of work; the film sometimes feels like a Burroughs-style cut-up of Lynch's earlier work. It's never less than fascinating, and constantly terrifying. But hard to watch in a single sitting. Laura Dern gives the performance(s) of a lifetime in it. I remember the first time I saw FIRE WALK WITH ME, half-cut in the early hours of the morning, with little or no knowledge of Twin Peaks. Damn thing just about ruined me. I was a wreck by the end. My favourite has to be MULHOLLAND DRIVE, though. Not his most complex work, probably, but the one I think displays his full range most satisfyingly. | ||
| John Forth (John) Username: John Registered: 05-2008 Posted From: 82.24.1.217 |
Oh, and he remains the one director who can absolutely chill me to my core. I'd love his movies for that alone, even if there was nothing else to them. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
Yeah, Weber's too thick to appreciate Lynch. He's not one of us cool kids. Let's go behind the bike sheds for a smoke and laugh at him. | ||
| John Forth (John) Username: John Registered: 05-2008 Posted From: 82.24.1.217 |
"Kcor stel" | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.156.185.116 |
addendum to previous post - apart from Blue Velvet. I like that film very much. The rest of his stuff that I've seen... see comments above. It never inspired me to watch anything else of his. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.36.215 |
"Let's go behind the bike sheds..." Just don't go into the alley behind that diner... MULHOLLAND DRIVE is very good indeed, but it does feel like a jigsaw from a charity shop, with a few pieces missing, a consequence of it failing to be a TV series, perhaps. My theory about MD is that there is only one character in the whole film. It's about reincarnation, one character interacting with reincarnations of themselves. My theory about IE is that it's about just what Lynch said "a woman in trouble". It's about a woman discovering she's pregnant and all her conflicted emotions about that. What appear to be exploitative elements in both films are actually central to their themes. THe lesbian scene in MD is about self-discovery and self-love, and contrasts with the bleak masturbation near the end. The horrible description of the fistula between the vagina and the rectum in IE is central to the theme too - that our feelings of sacred creation and life run parallel to a squalid fecal world. When they cross, we must go through a hell much like Laura Dern did of resolving them, healing and move forward as a stronger, more wholistic person. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.36.215 |
Why are you all looking at me like that? | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
I think it's the hat. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.4.19.77 |
Surely you must have found something to like in 'The Elephant Man', Weber? | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
Never bothered watching it. after the experiences listed above I lost all enthusiasm for watching anything else by Lynch. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Then you've missed one hell of a treat, Weber. 'The Elephant Man' is David Lynch's most mainstream and emotionally gripping work to date. A real one-off in his canon and one of the finest big budget Hollywood epics of its era. If one didn't know it was him the film could easily be mistaken for the work of a Milos Forman or Roman Polanski, at the absolute top of their game. Give it a try, please do. It's like nothing else he has directed. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
If it's ever on telly while I'm in and bored and there's nothing on the other side and I've got no books that I want to read and the internet's broken, I might. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.155.206.217 |
Is it possible to watch Fire Walk With Me without watching the series? I didn't like the series too much. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.16.203 |
Very much so, Tony. It's pretty well self-contained. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
The series was a bit of a mish-mash, Tony. Parts of it I loved and vast swathes of it I found painfully self-indulgent crap. A great work could still be rescued from that project - and it would include the entirety of 'Fire Walk With Me' severely re-edited and incorporating the good bits of the series. Why the hell not!? | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
I was never much into the series at the time, Tony, and I watched the film, and enjoyed it. Though I can only gather there's so much more to catch for those who saw the whole series. But I suspect the film SERENITY really does require seeing "Firefly," that one season it ran, first, from what others tell me. And they tell me the film is quite good, too.... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Yes, Craig, but I still insist that the greatest cinema/TV crossover consists of those 17 episodes of 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents' directed by the great man himself. Made on film, with the same low key production values as 'The Wrong Man' or 'Psycho', someone really should edit them into 6 "new" Hitchcock movies for general cinema release, imho! But I would like to live in a perfect world, where quality was appreciated, over all else, and tradition was honoured, respectfully. No wonder I identify with Arthur Bryant! | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Hey, I'm unfamiliar with those, Stevie. Time to go rooting around on youtube, apparently.... And I'll bet at least a few are based on stellar writers/stories of the time, right? | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Just went through and checked: three by Roald Dahl, two by John Collier, and one by Henry Sleasar. The others, I don't recognize.... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Just imagine 6 new portmanteau horror/suspense movies by the greatest popular filmmaker of all time... and, you guessed it, based on short stories by some of the grandmasters of genre fiction! These things bloody well exist and no one pays them any attention but anal obsessives like me! It's a crying shame I tell you!!!! | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.87.43 |
"Very much so, Tony. It's pretty well self-contained." Yes, but as is usual with these things, you get more out of watching both. It's more consistently dark than the series. The first 40 minutes might be a perfect episode of TP. You found the series self-consciously quirky, didn't you? Those would be my feelings about the TP clone NORTHERN EXPOSURE. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Well I finally got around in my life, Stevie, to seeing arguably the single most famous "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" episode ever, from what I've gathered from talking to people in the past: "Lamp to the Slaughter," written by Roald Dahl. A slight piece, but of course made riveting by A.H. Barbara Bel Geddes is superb - once the police arrive, she's literally unmoving, propped up static in her chair from which she surveys all around her. Deliciously evil. More please! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Outstanding stuff!! Another two favourites of mine are: 'Breakdown' (Joseph Cotten is mesmerising in it) & 'The Case Of Mr Pelham' (with Tom Ewell at his most sympathetically "everyman"). I could be wrong but I believe the Pelham story is the only time Hitchcock dealt with an inexplicably supernatural theme, and the scariest one... the doppelganger. Based on the same story that inspired 'The Man Who Haunted Himself' (1970) it's a little corker! The terror of 'The Birds' is imaginable while the doppelganger is the most frighteningly impossible supernatural monster of all, imo. | ||
| Frank (Frank) Username: Frank Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 85.222.86.21 |
Tony- I personally view Firewalk With Me as one of Lynch's most frightening movies. I also think it's one of the most 'straightforward' movies he's made. For Lynch, that is. It was severely overlooked on its release. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
I was impressed by it in the cinema at the time, Frank, and stuck with 'Twin Peaks' right to the end - through all the long insignificant asides that Lynch seemed to have no input into - and my final verdict was one of intermittently blown away frustration. An astoundingly disturbing David Lynch masterpiece lurks in there somewhere but, by God, it's buried in an awful lot of dross. The film is brilliantly made but after having ploughed through the series the effect of it wasn't half diluted. | ||
| Frank (Frank) Username: Frank Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 85.222.86.21 |
Stevie - I never really liked the series. I liked the opening episodes by Lynch (hadn't seen anything so dark in years at the time), and some of the less tongue in cheek ones, and of course Lynch's closing episodes, but overall, I thought the series directors simply tried to ape Lynch throughout. 'If TWIN PEAKS is his Ulysses, INLAND EMPIRE is his Finnegan's Wake, but has anyone genuinely enjoyed that book?' Proto - you could swap both those around (: I think that's a funny, if not quite compelling comparison to make. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
'Inland Empire' is his masterpiece, imo. The film he's been building up to his entire career and I've no idea how he could top it. At last he mastered all his talents and we got full unbridled access to the man's innermost and most nightmarish imaginings. I came out of the cinema reeling and haven't been able to pluck up the courage to watch it again since. Fucking sensational!! | ||
| Frank (Frank) Username: Frank Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 85.222.86.21 |
I was thrown at first my Inland Empire (I mean the first twenty minutes) on account of how it was filmed. But after that initial settling in period, I thought it was an uncanny move on Lynch's part to film it that way. I say uncanny, but obviously one of the great film directors in cinema knows exactly what he's doing, even if the rest of us have to spend twenty years deciphering certain scenes in his films (; | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
I'll check those other ones out, Stevie. Fo sho. On Lynch: If we use Ulysses and Finnegans Wake (to be anal, Proto, there's no apostrophe there - I'm pointing that out because Joyce himself would have pointed it out with savagery, I'm sure) as analogies, their whole existence requires "normal" fiction to be the mainstream, the 99.9% bedrock, to even exist (i.e., off which to be symbolic, metaphoric, etc.), or all dissolves to nonsense. That's becaues Lynch is creating, I believe, dreams on celluloid. The first 2/3's of MULHOLLAND DRIVE is a dream, ending when Naomi Watts wakes up to the first reality-shift. All of INLAND EMPIRE is indeed like Finnegans Wake, because it is 100% dream. And like all film, which say in the realm of horror cannot hope to compete with reality in displaying abject human evil and depravity, Lynch's dreams - however traumatic and dark and disturbing they are - cannot hope as well to come close to any one of our real-world dreams. But Lynch attempts, and excellently. I had had a horrifying nightmare once that was quite similar to the conclusion of the French INSIDE - I almost thought that film had plagiarized it. Dreams and nightmares of even the most innocent children can be whole worlds of Hellish evil.... | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Stevie, have you heard of the AHP episode "The Sorcerer's Apprentice"(1962)? http://youtu.be/_lh8iXYtl1s It was both scripted and from a short story by Robert Bloch, but considered too gruesome for TV; so it never aired, and has since made its way into the public domain. I think I'll tune into this one today.... |